Desistance of my daughter - sharing my story

In 2019, my mom died. She was an alcoholic and a heavy smoker. She was diagnosed with lung cancer in June and died that September. We were not close. I couldn't even bring myself to hug her or spend more than three days a year with her (we visited once a year). My parents divorced when I was eight years old and, along with my brother, I was shuffled among relatives and even spent nine months in an orphanage. My dad remarried and my stepmother was abusive. So, I had some trauma in my past.

I resented having to take care of my mom while she was dying. She was bedridden and the chemo and dementia, and, I imagine, the alcohol withdrawals, made her say mean and hurtful things. This experience traumatized me and bought a lot of hurtful childhood memories to the surface. Then came COVID lockdowns. In March of 2020, just seven months after my mom died, I was catching my breath and a new crisis hit.

I'm sure this story is familiar to PITT parent. My daughter spent a lot of time in her room, doing online school. We tried to adjust to our new normal, taking the kids on road trips, visiting with family, and having dinner together every night. We thought we were doing a great parenting job, given the circumstances. I even took my daughter to Universal Studios but her anxiety at being in crowds during a pandemic prevented her from relaxing and enjoying herself.

Three months later, my daughter informed me she was "non-binary", wanted to use "he/him" pronouns, and her new name was "Kai". She was at the end of sixth grade - exactly the age I was when I started having a lot of trauma in my life. Uncanny how history repeats itself. My reaction was confusion and anger. I thought I had been through enough. Was she doing this on purpose? I angrily vented to my husband that she was doing this for attention, that maybe it was a phase, that we should redirect her attention to other things, anything besides gender identity. I was very frustrated that another crisis had hit. We avoided any conversations around gender and just ignored it.

My daughter’s mental health deteriorated. When in-person school began, I would find her curled up in her bed in the mornings, sobbing, or sitting up in bed with the blanket over her head, unable to tell me what was going on. It might take her two hours to get ready for school. I wondered - had she had been bullied or assaulted? I begged her to tell me what was going on but she just didn't have words.

She started to see a therapist who specialized in DBT and it seemed to work wonders. I didn’t know that my daughter had talked to this therapist quite a bit about being transgender. On the night before our last family session, this therapist helped our daughter to "come out" to us. The therapist seemed to think this was no big deal but I couldn’t help thinking - this can't be happening. Everything in me was screaming that this was not who my daughter was, she was my girl and how could these other adults not see it? My child went from non-binary to transgender with the help of shallow therapy. It truly felt like I was in the upside-down.

We refused to call her by her trans boy name and refused to use he/him pronouns. That is when I joined a facebook group of parents with kids in the same situation as our daughter. Through this group, I found many resources and realized I was not alone. I found I should trust my intuition that I knew my daughter best. I had lost myself for a while, lost touch with my mom intuition, doubted myself. I learned what the word "gaslighting" meant.

As my daughter progressed into high school, her mental health really took a nose dive. I didn't know it, but she was experiencing crippling anxiety, OCD/intrusive thoughts, and depression. She was also diagnosed with ADHD. We had her see a second therapist (affirming) and start on medication with a psychiatrist (affirming). She went to an intensive outpatient program (affirming). We had to withdraw her completely from school. She had emotionally shut down and was at high risk for suicide.

She was still identifying as a trans boy. The word "safe" was mentioned in one of our therapy sessions. We were told that my daughter would be less likely to commit suicide if her family was supportive of her trans identity. After so much anger and raging against the schools and mental health system, I had to radically accept that my daughter’s actions may be out of my hands and she may end up transitioning. I became very depressed.

Our house is surrounded by very tall Douglas fir trees and I remember thinking, if one of those trees falls on this house and on me, it would be a relief. Sometimes I wondered while driving if I should just swerve into the oncoming traffic. I didn't want to be alive anymore. I didn't understand how something so very wrong could be embraced by other influential adults in my child’s life. I was in such crisis myself at that time that I had to take an antidepressant just to function. I was also seeing a therapist, then a parent coach. I read the book "Hang On To Your Kids" and that was when I started to focus on my relationship with my daughter.

Her mental health became so bad that she ended up ingesting a Tide pod and spending eight days in a behavioral hospital. When we called the hospital to talk to her, we asked for "Ollie" because we were fearful that if we seemed unsupportive of her trans identity, we might be prevented from seeing her. I really started to realize I couldn't rely on the mental health "professionals" to give me my daughter back. I had to do it myself.

As we spent a lot of one-on-one time together, my daughter told me later that, after her grandma died, I seemed very angry and took it out on her. I think this, and the new friend group she had at school who were all some different gender variations, were the catalyst for her downward spiral. She said I froze the first time she told me she was suicidal. She started really opening up to me about how my own trauma and parenting style of avoidance had affected her. (She was still identifying as a trans boy.)

As I worked on myself, my relationship with my daughter improved to the point where we could have short conversations about gender and I could ask questions without reacting, at least on the outside. She was learning to trust me again. She even "dated" another "trans boy", and I simply asked questions without criticizing and reacting. This was so counterintuitive but it worked. We had critical thinking conversations, not around gender. I spent every waking moment thinking about conversations we could have, how we could spend time together that day, and researching her mental health conditions. It was exhausting but so worth it. The progress was painfully slow.

After five long years, my daughter is desisting. She is embracing her femininity. Her big sister who is 10 years older was a big catalyst for this change. She is such a wonderful influence on my daughter, as well as my sister-in-law. I opened up to family and asked them to help me with my daughter. I couldn't have done it all on my own. This experience has taught me to trust my maternal instincts, to not let other adults run over me, and to be the mom that my kids can come to with anything, no matter how much I may disagree or how ridiculous I think they are being. I need to be their safe place. I know what unconditional love is and what it truly means to fight for your kids.

I can finally see my daughter coming back to herself.